WASHINGTON – Irate senators suggested a special prosecutor should investigate misconduct at the Justice Department, accusing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday of deceit on the prosecutor firings and President Bush’s eavesdropping program.
Democrats and Republicans alike hammered Gonzales in four hours of testimony. He would not answer numerous questions, angering some senators.
“It’s hard to see anything but a pattern of intentionally misleading Congress again and again,” Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told Gonzales during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “Shouldn’t the attorney general of the United States meet a higher standard?”
“Obviously, there have been instances where I have not met that standard, and I’ve tried to correct that,” Gonzales answered.
The hearing rekindled a political furor that began with last year’s firings of nine U.S. attorneys – one of whom is the federal prosecutor for Western Washington – and led to disclosure of a Justice Department hiring process that favored Republican loyalists.
Gonzales vowed anew Tuesday to remain in his job even as senators told him outright they believe he is unqualified to stay.
In one flashpoint, Gonzales denied he tried in 2004 to pressure a hospitalized former Attorney General John Ashcroft into renewing a counterterror program, as revealed earlier this year.
At the time, Ashcroft refused to give his OK to Gonzales and then-White House chief of staff Andy Card, saying he had delegated authority to make that decision to now-former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who questioned the program’s legality.
Gonzales described the encounter at Ashcroft’s hospital bedside as having come at the bidding of congressional leaders who urged the administration to continue the program. He said he and Card “didn’t press him. We said ‘Thank you’ and we left.”
Senators furiously accused Gonzales of misleading them a year ago when he testified there were no internal objections to the eavesdropping program that targeted suspected terrorists in the United States. Gonzales, however, said the hospital confrontation dealt with a different intelligence program that he would not identify.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Gonzales’ refusal to answer direct questions about the program demonstrated deceit.
“How can you say you should stay on as attorney general when we go through exercises like this?” Schumer asked. “You want to be attorney general, you should be able to clarify it yourself.”
“There’s a discrepancy here in sworn testimony,” added committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “We’re going to have to ask who’s telling the truth, who’s not.”
In another withering exchange, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., noted a potential need for a special prosecutor to bring contempt citations against two White House officials who have refused to testify about the U.S. attorney firings. The House Judiciary Committee will vote today on the citations against Bush chief of staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers.
The Justice Department, in a letter sent to lawmakers Tuesday, said criminal contempt of Congress law “does not apply” to the president or his aides when they invoke executive privilege.
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